Ryanair passengers stage four hour plane sit in after flight is diverted

Over 100 angry passengers refused to leave a Ryanair flight for four hours
after it was diverted from France to Belgium leading aircrew to switch off
the lights and lock the lavatories.

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The passengers demanded to be flown home and refused to disembarkPhoto: CORBIS

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The passengers refused to depart from the diverted Ryanair planePhoto: AFP

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels

9:00PM GMT 17 Nov 2010

There were frantic negotiations between police and passengers early on Wednesday morning after the mutineers staged the sit-in on the runway of Bierset-Liege airport, refusing to disembark and demanding to be taken home to France.

Reda Yahiyaoui, who was travelling with his wife, a two-month-old baby and a three-year-old, accused Ryanair of abandoning the protesting passengers.

"We were all tired after a long journey and angry at being dumped 200 miles away in Belgium. We just wanted to get back home so we sat on the plane asking to be flown to France," he said.

"But they just parked the plane then turned off the lights and locked the lavatories and left us with no food or water. The pilot also got off and even left the cockpit door open."

The unapologetic Irish "no frills" airline said the plane was among four flights that were forced to land in southern Belgium, because fog forced the closure of Beauvais airport in northern France.

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Passengers from three of the planes followed instructions by cabin crew to disembark for buses that would drive them to Beauvais but tourists in one aircraft refused to obey.

"Of the four aircraft that diverted to Liege just one group of passengers were disruptive," Stephen McNamara, a Ryanair spokesman said. "This is clearly a case of unreasonable behaviour by a minority of passengers."

The furious travellers – French tourists who had expected to land near Paris late on Monday night after returning from holidays in Morocco – refused to come out of the aircraft even after the cabin crew had left it.

After at least four hours of tense negotiations, officials convinced them to leave the plane and wait inside the airport for buses to take them away.

"The negotiation was so difficult that we weren't sure they would come out," said a firefighter at Liege airport. "People are obviously outraged."

Passengers on the plane said that the flight had left Fes, Morocco, three hours late before arriving in the grim Belgian city of Liege at around 11:30pm, local time.

The mutinous passengers finally abandoned their sit-in four hours later, just one hour before coaches finally arrived to ferry them 176 miles to their planned destination.

"The plane didn't land in Beauvais but in Liege without warning us. Consequently, we refused to leave the plane," said Mylene Netange.

"We were staging a legitimate protest but what they did was unacceptable. They just walked off and left us there."

Liege airport does not usually host Ryanair flights and the airline has no personnel there. The company's only destination in Belgium is in Charleroi, another depressed industrial city south of Brussels.